On Monday, September 11, an audience of nearly 50 people attended Fox Valley Initiative’s monthly meeting at FreedomProject Academy. Dan Lennington, Deputy Counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, was the main speaker.
His PowerPoint presentation from the evening is available here.
Lennington opened by mentioning WILL’s first-of-its-kind project to develop model school board policies. He encouraged everyone in the room — parents, grandparents, school board members, school board candidates — to familiarize themselves with the model policies and work to adopt them in their local school districts. The policies can be downloaded individually at the WILL website; they’re also available to download in a single, free 56-page report.
Lennington also mentioned the July 2021 Fund Every Kid report, written by his colleague, Will Flanders, and WILL’s newly released Citizens’ Guide to Open Government.
The best way to stay on top of WILL’s work, he said, is to visit its website and sign up for email updates.
He shifted gears to talk specifically about racial equality litigation: WILL’s Equality Under the Law project. He first mentioned a little history of the right to equality:
1776 – the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal.
1978 – the Bakke decision declared affirmative action constitutional (although it outlawed strict racial quotas)
2023 – Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard essentially over-ruled Bakke, deciding race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Importantly, Lennington said, the ruling applies to private businesses as well as to government entities; Harvard is a private university.
Closer to home, Lennington mentioned the recently advertised event for “freshmen students of color” at Appleton East High School. WILL sent a letter threatening to sue the school; East backed off and opened the event to all freshmen. Lennington noted 16% of African-American students at Appleton East perform at grade level in English, and just 10% do so in math. He also noted 77% of Appleton Area School District employeesdon’t teach – they’re not in the classroom.
Moving on to such issues as Critical Race Theory and Social-Emotional Learning, Lennington noted families can opt out of “Human Growth and Development” classes; they can opt out of surveys; and they can insist on notification when CRT and race issues are going to be discussed in classrooms. Forms parents can use are available on WILL’s website for parent resources.
Lennington said WILL is looking for plaintiffs for a lawsuit addressing opting out of Human Growth and Development. “Schools say, ‘we’re teaching social-emotional learning, that’s not human growth and development, so you can’t opt out.’” Don’t let them get away with that!
Noting Title IX was intended to protect opportunities for girls/women, Lennington said there are two types of cases in Wisconsin that are likely to go to the state (eventually U.S.?) supreme court:
1) Bathroom/locker room cases. The Mukwonago School District, he noted, adopted a policy saying students must use the bathroom/locker room that conforms to their biological gender. The school district has been sued by the family of a transgender girl.
2) Hiding gender transitioning from parents, which Lennington said violates the “right to direct the upbringing of your children.”
Lennington concluded his presentation by discussing the possibility that Donald Trump could be kept off the Wisconsin ballot.
He noted that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents Trump from being elected President if he has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Importantly, the provision is “self-executing,” he said: It does not require a law to be passed or a court to rule against Trump.
He said this means the six commissioners of the Wisconsin Elections Commission “get to decide” whether Trump will be on the Wisconsin ballot. The 72 county clerks in Wisconsin also have the authority to remove him before printing their local ballots. And the 1,850 municipal clerks in Wisconsin could take him off the ballot “simply by taking a Sharpie® to the ballots after they’ve been printed.”
“This is a trap that can be sprung at any time, at any point in the process,” Lennington said.
“Last time,” Lennington said, “they prevented Trump from being president by breaking the law.” This time, he said, it’ll be “lawfare” — there will be lawsuits for/against Trump and everything will be tied up in courts.
“We can take this away from [the Democrats],” he said, “only by not nominating Trump.”
Dan Lennington, deputy counsel for the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and lead counsel in the group's Equality Under the Law project, addressed the September 11 meeting of Fox Valley Initiative.
Lennington chats with guests after the Fox Valley Initiative meeting on September 11, 2023.
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